The advent of the Internet as well as network operating systems such as Novell Netware™ and Microsoft Windows NT™ and 2000 have encouraged users to become more mobile in their computing habits. Many business people have or make use of a primary desktop computer and a portable computer or other device for email, word processing, spreadsheet and other purposes while traveling. Home users increasingly may use both stationary desktop and laptop-class devices as well. Often, the primary and portable computers may share the same or similar operating system or environment, so that the user may work on the same data files and use the same or compatible applications, both at the office or home and on the road.
While the sharing of data and also the application suite between primary and host or secondary machines is a widespread practice, there is as yet no way in which the operating environment itself may be mirrored between the two platforms via removable media. For instance, a person's office computer may run on the Windows™ 2000 operating system, their laptop may run on the Windows™ 95 platform. When switching from one environment to the other, the application suite may run compatibly on both machines, but the desktop and other environmental variables presented to the user on each may be different.
For instance, the desktop pixel size, color depth, wallpaper, icon set, font settings, task bar placement, mouse settings, screen savers, power options, keyboard settings, time settings, files and directory structure, network settings, password settings, printer settings, audio defaults, browser settings, file associations, backup settings, other system or application settings and other environmental variables may differ on a desktop and portable machine. While some of those environmental settings may not affect the operation of applications or ability to access and save data files, the lack of consistency between machines may hinder other functions, such as ability to print, dial up or otherwise access the Internet or other network resources, scan for disk integrity or other functions. Any attempt to reconcile these parameters when traveling must now be done manually by the user, which is a tedious and error-prone process, or both machines must be directly connected via cabling or other techniques to image one drive to another. Other drawbacks exist.